


All In The Balance

by cordeliadelayne



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Realising Feelings, arthur gets kidnapped, cobb finally gets a clue, cobb to the rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 13:00:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6611530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cordeliadelayne/pseuds/cordeliadelayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur goes missing on Tuesday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All In The Balance

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal in 2010.

Arthur goes missing on Tuesday.

No one starts looking for him until Thursday.

* * * * *

Cobb fires up his laptop at 9.05am on Thursday morning. The kids are both on their way to school with their grandmother and he has the place to himself. He feels a little guilty about how good it feels to have some alone time, after all he did to get back to them, but he knows that he has to start living again, and the first step is to stop avoiding his emails.

He has 459 of them.

He gets up and goes to make a fresh pot of coffee. He can see that he's going to be a while.

He sits back down at 9.20am with a cup of coffee and a fresh from the oven croissant. He takes a bite and skims his emails. He wonders whether he should sort by date, by subject, or by sender. He decides on sender, organises again into date and decides to pick those emails less likely to induce a coronary.

Which is why the email from Arthur, sent on Wednesday at 11.00am, is the first to catch his eye.

> Hi Dom,
> 
> If you are reading this it means that I haven't managed to reach my computer today. First, call my cell. If I don't answer or the voice mail kicks in, call my apartment in Paris.
> 
> Arthur.

At 9.23am Cobb puts down his coffee cup and runs to find his phone.

* * * * *

When Cobb called Arthur's cell phone he was unsurprised to find it going straight to voice mail. When he called Arthur's Parisian apartment there was no message, only a tune played back to him. He recorded it, and then hung up.

He went into his library, scanning between the children's and architecture books until he came upon a well-worn copy of _Madame Bovary._ He pulled it out and took it back to his computer.

It had been Mal's favourite book and the three of them had long used its pages for passing codes between themselves. This time each note of the music Arthur had left on his answer machine would correspond to a word or phrase in the book. It would take a little time, but Cobb would work out where Arthur was.

* * * * * *

The phone rang, startling Cobb out of his contemplation of the message Arthur had left him. It was only an address, a hotel in London that had been demolished a year ago.

“Hello?” he asked, cradling the phone in one hand while surfing the internet with the other. There _must_ be something that he was missing.

“Where's Arthur?”

“Eames?” Cobb asked, suddenly alert.

“Yes, yes, your point man, where is he?”

“He's not my...” Cobb started, then stopped, his brain catching up with him. “Why are you asking?”

There was a frustrated sigh on the other end of the line. “He was supposed to meet me three hours ago to debrief on a job. When was the last time he was late?”

“Never,” Cobb murmured. Then he quickly filled Eames in on what he knew so far.

Eames swore. “I knew this job was too easy. Arthur did too but I didn't listen. The Architect, he's an old friend of mine. Caught him talking to a few shady characters last week but I didn’t think anything of it.”

Cobb got up and switched to his cordless phone as he moved towards the back of the house. He pulled a suitcase out from a closet and dragged it to his bedroom.

“You're in London?” Cobb asked.

“No, Botswana. Why did you think - ?”

“The code Arthur left pointed me there.”

“I'll meet you at the airport,” Eames said. Then he hung up before Cobb could.

* * * * *

“Miles, I know this is a lot to ask...”

Miles stood by the kitchen table and stared at Cobb, disappointed. “I thought this was the last of it. Once you were back here, with your children...”

“Arthur's in trouble.”

Miles scanned Cobb's face and then nodded. “Then of course you have to go. I'll pick the children up from school, tell them you’ve...” He waved his hand in the air. “I'll think of something.”

“Thanks,” Cobb said. He grabbed Mile's arm as he went past to go out the kitchen door. “I do appreciate this.”

“It's Arthur,” Miles said with a nod and Cobb allowed himself a small smile. Arthur and Miles had spent a lot of time together while Cobb was out of the country, even Miles' ex-wife had been charmed by Arthur, which made getting news on how the kids were doing a lot easier. Arthur was part of the family.

* * * * *

The flight seemed to take forever and it was impossible for Cobb to settle. He certainly couldn’t sleep. The films were all new to him but he'd been so out of touch lately that they held very little interest for him. He let the children watch the odd cartoon but apart from that he didn't really watch much television. He hardly even glanced at the news these days though he had grabbed a newspaper on the way on to the plane, just in case anything useful might pop out at him. Arthur must have known there was a chance that he was being followed, or that someone was sniffing round. And if they took just him and left Eames alone, that meant it wasn't their current job that was the problem.

And even as he muttered that Arthur was perfectly capable of looking after himself, he was still worried.

Eames was waiting at the arrivals gate and hurried him into a hired car.

“You look dreadful,” Eames said after a moment. Cobb just grunted and returned to looking out of the window. “Chatty too.”

“Do you have any leads?”

“As it happens,” Eames replied. Taking both hands off the steering wheel he reached to the back seat and grabbed a file before passing it to Cobb.

“Watch the road,” Cobb muttered, ignoring Eames' grin in favour of opening the file.

“Nash? Really?” He stared down at the photo of his old architect. “I thought he was dead.”

“Turns out Cobol made a deal with him. Pretty lucrative from what I've gathered. After they broke both his legs.” Eames paused. “And they seem to hold dear Arthur responsible.”

Cobb frowned. “It was my call.”

Eames shrugged. “Maybe you're next.”

Cobb didn’t reply. He'd been having much the same thoughts himself.

* * * * *

“This is it,” Eames said, breaking through the gloom that had settled around Cobb. Cobb looked up and across the street. What had once been a fine hotel was now merely an ordinary looking newsagents.

Cobb scanned the area, sensing Eames doing the same thing. “We weren’t followed?”

“No,” Eames said, slowly, about to point out that he knew his job perfectly before deciding that Cobb didn’t need to hear it. Arthur meant a lot to both of them.

“Then let's check it out.”

They moved out of the car and headed over the road, eyes constantly moving, ensuring they weren't any kind of target.

Inside they found a man and his daughter serving customers. They nodded at them in greeting and then Cobb waited for the customers to leave while Eames moved over to the magazines and began scanning them for anything interesting. He pulled something down from the top shelf and Cobb sighed under his breath.

“Can I help you?” the young girl asked, moving along the counter towards Cobb.

Cobb hesitated. He hadn't actually planned what he was going to do next. Thankfully, Eames came to his rescue.

“Yes, I'll take this,” Eames said, placing a copy of Playboy on the counter. “And any information you might have.”

“Information?” the girl asked, warily. “Are you from the police?”

Eames' smile was deadly. “No. Nothing like that.”

The girl waited patiently, not moving to take the magazine and carefully not glancing at her father who seemed to be doing a stock-take of the items behind the till.

“Then what would you like to know? We have a lot of maps of the sights, if that's what you're interested in?”

Eames shook his head. “I'm a local. Just returned to the country.” He paused as if an idea had struck. “I often dreamed about London though.”

The girl's eyes immediately lit up, but she did a commendable job of hiding it. Cobb straightened his spine but let Eames continue taking the lead.

“Dreams are good,” the girl said. “Would you care to dream now?”

“We'd be delighted,” Eames said with a beaming smile.

The girl returned it and started moving towards the back of the shop. “Through here. Father, see that we're not disturbed.”

Cobb and Eames exchanged bemused looks and then followed the girl through the back of the shop and outside across a dingy side street to another run-down building. The girl took a key from around her neck and opened a door with green flecks of paint peeling from it and graffiti pictures of monsters sprayed around its edges. Cobb's hand automatically moved to the gun at his hip, but he didn't do anything other than reassure himself that it was still there.

Eames went first, keeping a close eye on the girl. He suspected he knew what they were about to find when they went inside, but it was still best to keep his mind clear from assumptions, he'd learned that the hard way on the inception job.

“My god,” Cobb whispered as they entered the large room the girl led them to. Dozens upon dozens of men and women lay asleep on cots. Three armed men were patrolling between the beds and cast the newcomers interested looks before the girl shook her head at them.

“This is where most people prefer to dream.”

“Only most?” Eames asked.

The girl shrugged. “There are private booths if you would prefer to construct your own dream. But most people prefer to share a joint dream, like this. One constructed for you by a professional architect.”

The girl beamed, clearly wanting the others to be impressed at the set-up and slightly put out that they were not. Instead Eames and Cobb were looking around with equal parts curiosity and wariness. Why would Arthur have sent them here? Was he here too, stuck in a dream that he couldn’t get out of? It seemed unlikely from what they both knew of the point man.

“These private booths,” Eames asked, when it became clear that Cobb wasn't going to say anything, “are any of them in use right now?”

The girl's smile faltered. “They can't be interrupted.”

Cobb turned towards her then. “Where are they?” he demanded, voice rising enough that one of the guards looked up and started to move towards them.

“Cobb,” Eames warned. “There are people sleeping in here.” Innocent people we don't want to get killed, he didn’t add, but Cobb understood all the same and backed down a little.

“They can't be interrupted,” the girl said again.

Eames took the lead. “If you don't show us where they are, right now, my colleague here is going to go back into the shop and put a bullet in your father's forehead.”

The girl gaped for a moment before nodding. “Very well. This way.”

She waved the guards away and started walking, hurriedly, towards the back rooms and then up some stairs that neither Cobb nor Eames had noticed in the darkness.

Two flights of stairs later they were outside a room with a bright red door with a “DO NOT DISTURB” sign on it.

“This is it?” Cobb asked. “This is where they're dreaming?”

The girl nodded. “I don't ask any questions, you understand. What they do in there is their own business.”

“And this man,” Cobb asked, taking a photo of Arthur out of his wallet (much to Eames' surprise), “is he one of the dreamers?”

“Yes,” the girl replied, sounding surprised. “I thought he was sick...”

“Why?” Cobb interrupted.

“He was slurring his speech and didn't seem able to focus on anything...” The girl trailed off as Eames and Cobb both removed their weapons.

“You should leave now,” Eames told her, before taking up a stance by the side of the door. The girl did as she was told, taking the stairs back down two at a time. “How do you want to handle this?” Eames asked Cobb.

For an answer, Cobb kicked the door in and moved quickly inside, gun raised.

“Right,” Eames muttered under his breath, “always a pleasure working with you.” And then he followed.

* * * * *

Eames didn’t know what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't what they found. Arthur was crouched in the middle of the room, panting hard and covered in blood. Five men lay around him, necks of two broken, knives protruding from the chests of the others. It would seem that they were too late to effect a rescue.

Eames was about to say as much when he paused and watched as Cobb rushed forward and dropped to his knees in front of Arthur. They stared at each other in silence for a moment before Cobb took Arthur's face in his hands and gently moved it forward, before kissing him.

Eames nearly dropped his gun in surprise.

The kiss didn't last very long but it was enough for Eames to decide that he'd be best waiting outside.

* * ** *

“That's new,” Arthur said after a moment, registering the closing of the door behind Eames.

“I – I was worried,” Cobb replied. “And...”

“And?”

“And I missed you.”

Arthur smiled. “Okay.”

“Okay? That's all you're going to say?”

Arthur looked around the room. “I've been kidnapped, tortured and subjected to the creations of the most incompetent architect you could possibly imagine. Yeah, okay is all I've got right now.”

Cobb gave a soft laugh. “Right. We should get you checked out by a doctor.”

Arthur nodded and winced as he started to stand. “Yeah, I bet Eames knows someone local.”

“Eames,” Cobb muttered, as if he'd forgotten all about the other man. “He -”

“He won't say anything,” Arthur interrupted. “To any one else,” he amended off Cobb's look. “We're never going to hear the end of it.”

Cobb put his arms around Arthur to better help him walk and Arthur didn't even bother putting up a protest.

“Well, I think I can live with that,” Cobb said.

“Does this mean you're back?” Arthur asked, carefully not looking at him.

Cobb paused. “Let's just take one day at a time.”

“Well,” said Arthur, after a moment, “I guess I can live with that.”


End file.
